WTF Is It Now?!?

Well, DUH
NBC's Andrea Mitchell has a hissy:

Last Monday afternoon, the State Department's public affairs shop e-mailed beat reporters that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had agreed to appear that very night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News Channel show, "On the Record." Mitchell went ballistic.

"This is OUTRAGEOUS," NBC's foreign policy correspondent scorched the State Department flacks in an e-mail. "He [Armitage] can't answer telephone calls or REPEATED requests for backgrounders or an on-camera interview from the correspondent representing the most widely watched NETWORK newscast . . . and he's doing a FOX talk show that has no relationship to foreign policy?"

Mitchell vented: "I don't get it but it is very upsetting. It also defies any understanding of the difference between the NBC Nightly News, TODAY program, CNBC and MSNBC PLUS the nation's biggest Web site. Is the administration that desperate to appeal to a niche audience? If I sound upset, it's because I am."

What did you expect? As Hesiod says, The Bush administration is punishing you and your network for all of a sudden aggressively covering the misadministration's dissembling and lies leading up to the war with Iraq.

Either get used to it, or tear them a new asshole. Eventually, they'll get the message.

If you and your fellow network correspondents (and CNN) get together and refuse to toady up to the Bush administration, they cannot get their message out to a broad enough audience. They need you more than you need them. When the press finally figures this out, the gloves will come off.

I won't hold my breath.